United Nations Convention
to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD), Struggle against
Desertification

The new UNCCD Publication: Climate change and land degradation: Bridging knowledge
and stakeholders.

The
twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD (COP12) will be held in Ankara
from 12-23 October 2015.

UNCCD Google Search 2015

DROUGHT in CALIFORNIA SPREADING EASTWARD

WILLIAM DEBUYS, Mega-droughts: How dry, how
long, how much damage? LOS ANGELES TIMESCalifornia in the Great Drought is a living
diorama of how the future is going to look across much of the United States as
climate change sets in. Like hippies and “dude,” wine bars and hot tubs, mega-
churches and gay rights, what gets big in California goes national soon enough.
Now, the large dark bruise spreading across the state on the U.S. Drought
Monitor map is a preview of a bone-dry world to come.

Admittedly, recent summer rains have somewhat
dulled the edge of this exceptional California drought, now in its fourth year.
Full recovery, however, would require about a foot of rain statewide between
now and January, a veritable deluge for places like Fresno, which in good times
get that much only in a full year.

To be clear, the current drought may not have
been caused by climate change. After all, California has a long history of
fierce droughts that arise from entirely natural causes, some of them lasting a
decade or more.

Even so, climate change remains a potent factor
in the present disaster. According to the state’s Climate Change Center,
California is on average about 1.7 degrees hotter than a century ago, and its
rate of warming is expected to triple in the century ahead. The kicker is that
hotter means much drier because as temperature creeps up, evaporation gallops.
As a result, the droughts of the future will be effectively more destructive
than those of the past.

Throughout the state, draconian cutbacks in
water use are in force. Some agricultural districts are receiving zero percent
of the federally controlled irrigation water they received in past years, while
state-controlled water deliveries are running about 15 percent of normal. A
staggering 5,200 wildfires have burned across the state this year, and the fire
season still has months to go.

So how is
this a harbinger for lands to the east? The long-term forecast for an immense
portion of western North America, from California to Texas and north to South
Dakota, is for a future of the same, only worse.

Here is the unvarnished version as expressed in
a paper that appeared in Science Advances in February: “The mean state of
drought in the late 21st century over the Central Plains and Southwest will
likely exceed even the most severe mega-drought periods of the Medieval era in
both high and moderate emissions scenarios, representing an unprecedented
fundamental shift with respect to the last millennium.”

Let’s unpack that. Principal author Benjamin
Cook of NASA and his colleagues from Columbia and Cornell universities are
saying that climate change will bring to the continent a “new normal” more
brutally dry than even the multiple-decades-long droughts that caused the
Native American societies of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and Mesa Verde in
Colorado to collapse. This, they add, will happen even if greenhouse gas
emissions are significantly lowered soon.

If
California points the way to dry times ahead, it also gives us a glimpse of how
a responsible society can adjust to a warmer future. In general, the state’s individual consumers and water
districts are meeting conservation goals, thanks to a range of innovations and
sacrifices.

Perhaps most impressively, the state has adopted
its own pioneering cap-and-trade program aimed at rolling back greenhouse gas
emissions to 1990 levels. Emissions are capped and emitters are assigned a
certain number of carbon permits. If they emit less, they can sell their extra
permits in a state auction, creating incentives to cut carbon pollution.

Will cap
and trade enable the state to meet its greenhouse gas goal? That’s unknown,
but there is no debating its positive effect on the state treasury. In fiscal
year 2015-16, the permit auction will net about $2.2 billion for mass transit,
affordable housing and a range of climate-adaptation programs. And by the way,
the warnings of naysayers and climate deniers that cap and-trade would prove a
drag on the economy have proved groundless.

If President Barack Obama’s just-announced Clean Power Plan withstands court
challenges, it will prove a powerful
spur to other states to “put a price on carbon.” The plan mandates
state-by-state reductions in power plant carbon emissions that will drive them
32 percent below 2005 levels. Many states undoubtedly have to adopt
cap-and-trade systems. Where will they look for a workable example? California,
obviously.

And yet, only governors in Hawaii, Oregon and
Washington on the West Coast, Minnesota in the Midwest, and a handful of
Northeastern states will even acknowledge the importance of acting to curb
climate change as well as adapt to it.

Even in states likely to face acute water
shortages, governors have assumed the posture of startled ostriches. Doug
Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, acknowledges that the climate may
indeed be changing but doubts that humans play a causal role in it. Susana
Martinez of New Mexico, also a Republican, continues to insist that climate
science is inconclusive, while former governor of Texas and current
presidential candidate Rick Perry adamantly remains “not a scientist,” although
he knew enough to inform us in his 2012 campaign screed Fed Up that climate
change science is “a contrived phony mess.”

This year, the troglodytic deniers may get a
boost from an unlikely source. An El Nino event seems to be brewing in the
Pacific Ocean, which may draw winter precipitation to Southern California and
points eastward. If it happens, the Republican rain dancers will feel confirmed
in their denialism, much as a broken clock is right at least twice a day.

One or even several El Ninos, however, will not
avert the new normal for much of the American West. Adaptation could soften
some of the blows, and possibly, if we act soon enough and strongly enough, we
may manage to cap the overall changes at some still livable level.

Eventually, California’s message will be heeded.
Get ready.

William deBuys is the author of A Great
Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest and The Last
Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth’s Rarest Creatures. A longer version of this
essay appears at TomDispatch.com .==

[I sent the above to the Fayetteville City Council and the
Washington County Quorum Court 9-13-15, asking them they prepare at least for
the refugees. –Dick]

William deBuys .A Great Aridness:
Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. Oxford University Press (OUP)USA. 12 December 2011. 384 Pages | About Us | Careers | Contact Us | Help.

Beautifully written naturalistic prose, in the tradition of
Wallace Stegner and John McPhee

Compelling topic: the Southwest continues to be the
fastest-growing and one of the most urban regions in the country--the book
addresses whether or not its oasis-based culture will be able to continue.

American Southwest is a proxy for semiarid ecosystems (e.g.,
Australia, the Middle East)--the climate effects in this region will shed light
on climate events worldwide

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Hot - off the
press ! The new UNCCD PublicationClimate
change and land degradation: Bridging knowledge and stakeholdersThe effects of demographic
pressure and unsustainable land management practices on land
degradation and desertification are being exacerbated worldwide due
to the effects of climate change, which include changing rainfall
patterns, increased frequency and intensity of drought and floods,
rising temperatures, and profound ecological shifts.

As a consequence, populations’ capacities to generate livelihoods
are limited, particularly in the drylands. Where land users are
exposed and sensitive to changes but able to adapt, through
flexibility and mobility in the use of the natural capital, they
can cope with such stresses. When they cannot adapt, land users
become more vulnerable, which can lead to increased poverty,
malnutrition, outmigration, political insecurity and conflict.

Taking action to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience of
ecosystems and human populations to the combined effects of climate
change and land degradation needs to consider:

·The degree, duration and extent to
which the social-ecological system is exposed to land degradation
and climate change (initial assessment measuring exposure);

·The extent to which the function
and structure of the social-ecological system is likely to be
modified by the changes it is exposed to (impact assessment
measuring sensitivity);

·The extent to which it is possible
to change the way the social-ecological system functions, so that
livelihoods can still be maintained (adaptation assessment
measuring adaptive capacities).

Facts and figures about climate
change and land degradation:

·It is estimated that, during the
last 40 years, nearly one-third of the world’s arable land has been
lost toerosion and continues to be lost at a rate of more than 10
million hectares per year.

·25% of the Earth‘s land area is
either highly degraded or undergoing high rates of degradation.

·Land use change and degradation is
responsible for about 20% of carbon emissions globally.

·From 1950-1980, 10-14% of the land
mass was classified as dry, which rose to 25-30% between 2000 and
2010.

·The average river run-off and
water availability is projected to decrease by 10-30% over some dry
regions, including the dry tropics.

·Each of the last three decades has
been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

MORE publications of interest:TEEB for
agriculture and food ( TEEBAgFood)Study
Ecosystems and agricultural & food systems are typically
evaluated in isolation from one another, despite their many and
significant links. The economic invisibility of many of these links
is a major reason for this ‘silo’ thinking. However, ecosystems are
the ecological home in which crop and livestock systems thrive and
produce food for humans, and in turn agricultural practices, food
production, distribution and consumption impose several
unquantified externalities on ecosystems and human health and
well-being. TEEBAgFood works to increase
preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity by using economic
valuation to inform food system policies. The workshop
taking place in Brussels this week September 8-11, 2015 has
five main objectives: review a variety of existing studies on
agricultural sectors that externalize a disproportionate share of
costs; identify gaps and lessons learned; finalize a study
framework for valuation; explore options for additional research;
and agree on content, structure, and writing teams for two reports
on ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ and ‘Policies: Production
and Consumption.’

Farmers
will undertake many adaptation actions to meet changing climate
conditions and will often do so without any government
intervention. However, when such actions provide both private and
public benefits, the public sector may play a role in how these
are developed and this report aims to establish a framework to
help identify specific actions that governments could take. Read
thepaper online here .

Provides
accessible information about the science behind land degradation
and restoration for those who do not directly engage with the
science allowing full access to the issue at hand. Includes
practical on-the-ground examples garnered from diverse areas,
such as the Sahel, Southeast Asia, and the U.S.A. Provides practical
tools for designing and implementing restoration/re-greening
processes. See the table of contents. Editors: Ilan Chabay
& Martin Frick & Jennifer Helgeson/ Elsevier

FAO's most
comprehensive forest review to date, The Global Forest Resources
Assessment 2015 just published!World
deforestation slows down as more forests are better managed. FAO
publishes key findings of global forest
resources assessment. FAO has estimatedthat total carbon emissions from
forests decreased by more than 25 percent between 2001 and 2015,
mainly due to a slowdown in global deforestation rates. Some 129
million hectares of forest - an area almost equivalent in size to
South Africa - have been lost since 1990, according to FAO's most
comprehensive forest review to date. Have a look at:
Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 - How are the world’s
forests changing? (Infographic) Read Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015

The twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties to the
UNCCD (COP12) will be held in Ankara from 12-23 October
2015.

News updates 27 July - 7 August 2015

Notification: Sponsorship
of journalists to COP12
The UNCCD has issued a call for journalists wishing to cover COP12
but need sponsorship to send in their applications by Wednesday,
19 August. Details of the requirements are posted here. By the same date, applicants for
sponsorship must ensure they have also applied for accreditation to
COP12. The requirements for accreditation are provided on the COP12 page.

The twelfth
session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD (COP12) will be held
in Ankara from 12-23 October 2015. The venue of the session will be
as ...]

Notification: For Civil Society
Organizations
The UNCCD secretariat has sent out the invitation to COP12 to all
CSOs accredited and those provisionally accredited ​to the UNCCD
Conference of the Parties. The information is available here.

Reminders:
Side events and exhibitions for COP12
The deadline for the submission of requests to organize side
events andexhibitions at COP12 is in two
weeks: 31 August 2015. The application forms are available here .

The German National Library of Economics- Leibniz Information
Center for Economics has published version 9.0 of its STW Thesaurus for Economics.
This relaunch marks the end of a complete revision of STW
according to the current terminology usage in the latest
international research literature in economics.

Journals and articles with a focus
on land degradation, desertification, drought

Recent and
hot-off the press scientific articles with abstracts for your
ease of reference . Lists of open access journals and paid
journals with major focus on DLDD and SLM you can find on the
same page..Follow our dedicated page here